Michael Vorfeld

Michael Vorfeld is a Berlin-based percussionist, visual artist and performer working between improvised music, electroacoustic sound, photography, film and light installations. He began exploring percussion as a teenager and studied art and visual communication, developing a practice in which the sound of materials and the visual conditions of performance are closely connected.

In 1982 he became involved in the sound-art group Heinrich Mucken, known for site-specific actions and experimental approaches to space. He later developed self-designed string instruments and his project Glühlampenmusik (Light Bulb Music), in which changing electrical currents, illumination and flickering lights produce both visual rhythms and audible sound. His collaborations include Burkhard Beins, Reinhold Friedl, Ute Wassermann, Mazen Kerbaj and other musicians and artists working across experimental disciplines.

On Creative Sources, Vorfeld appears on kreisel (CS056), a collaboration with turntable artist Claus van Bebber; Sieben entrückte Lieder (CS339), with Frank Gratkowski and Richard Scott; and Dots and Dashes (CS881), a quartet with Floros Floridis, Ernesto Rodrigues and Guilherme Rodrigues recorded in Berlin in October 2025. The three albums document his continuing exploration of acoustic percussion, uncommon timbres and collaborative improvisation.